Parks 1-10 - Monmouth County

95————— —thompsonparkWilliam P. Thompson, who had served as a colonel in the ConfederateArmy and was president of the National Lead Company and a formervice-president of the Standard Oil Company, purchased Brookdale Farmin 1893 and commissioned the noted New York architects Carrere andHastings, designers of the New York Public Library, to expand Withers’house into a Georgian Revival mansion. Thompson was also an authorityon horse racing and bred and trained nearly 200 race horses, includingmany famous ones, at Brookdale Farm. When he died unexpectedly in1896, his son Lewis Steenrod Thompson completed the house and marriedGeraldine Livingston Morgan that same year (mansion, stable handsand 40-stall training barn pictured left in 1906).Geraldine grew up near Hyde Park, New York, where she becamefriends with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cousin Eleanor Roosevelt, andGeraldine entertained Mrs. Roosevelt at Brookdale Farm on several occasions.Mrs. Thompson was politically active and in 1923 she becamethe first female New Jersey delegate to a Republican National Convention.In 1931 she was the first woman to receive an honorary Masterof Philosophy degree from Rutgers University. Her support of prisonreform, education, public health, and land conservation, includingpreserving Island Beach as a state park, brought her numerous honorsand led many people to call her the “First Lady of Monmouth County”and “New Jersey’s First Lady.”In 1985, the County more than tripled the size of Thompson Parkwith the acquisition of the 334-acre Marlu Farm, which had oncebeen a part of Brookdale Farm, and the adjacent 118-acre CheecaFarm to preserve the land from being developed and to protectthe Swimming River Reservoir. Today, Thompson Park and HolmdelTownship’s 83-acre Cross Farm Park on the east side of LongbridgeRoad protect nearly two miles of shoreline on the north side of theSwimming River Reservoir.